Win 98 very slow to boot up

[sjgmoney]

I guess I never really noticed how freakin slow my Win 98 computer booted up until I got another one with XP Home installed. Then this weekend I was on my mother's computer, Win ME and it booted up very fast, just as fast as my XP.

My question is why does my 98 suck so bad? I went into msconfig and tried to limit the services that start up but still not much help. I've run adaware, spybot, etc and cleaned it up but no improvement. Is 98 just bad in this regard? Where can I find a list of services that are definitely needed, so I can get rid of some more? Thanks for the help in advance.

 

[Schadenfroh]

because it is old, obsolete technology that is based on DOS and the GUI is built around it.

 

[sjgmoney]

I thought ME was supposed to be a real piece of crap yet it boots up super fast. Any other thoughts here?

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: sjgmoney
I thought ME was supposed to be a real piece of crap yet it boots up super fast. Any other thoughts here?

It is but it is the absolute worse OS ever created. Just go to 98SE or 2000/XP.

-Kevin

 

[Link19]

The whole Windows 9X/ME family of operating systems was a piece of junk!! I can't believe those piece of trash operating systems are actually still supported!!! I mean why in the world would anyone spend the money to construct or buy a high end Pentium 4 or Athlon 64 machine and run a piece of junk OS like Windows 98/ME as their primary operating system??? So why do high end modern Intel and AMD motherboards have chipset drivers for Windows 98/ME??? I mean that is just ridiculous!!!!

 

[loic2003]

Originally posted by: Link19
The whole Windows 9X/ME family of operating systems was a piece of junk!! I can't believe those piece of trash operating systems are actually still supported!!!

They're not supported any longer. According to the microsoft product lifecycle:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/lifecycle/default.mspx

they've all entered the non-supported stage. Even microsoft think the 9x OS's are defunct! Steer clear from these nasty operating systems, you'll only waste your time, get really frustrated and be laughed at if you go for '98!

hope this advice helps...

 

[Link19]

Originally posted by: loic2003

Originally posted by: Link19
The whole Windows 9X/ME family of operating systems was a piece of junk!! I can't believe those piece of trash operating systems are actually still supported!!!

They're not supported any longer. According to the microsoft product lifecycle:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/lifecycle/default.mspx

they've all entered the non-supported stage. Even microsoft think the 9x OS's are defunct! Steer clear from these nasty operating systems, you'll only waste your time, get really frustrated and be laughed at if you go for '98!

hope this advice helps...

I sure agree to stay clear of those nasty operating systems. I thought I've heard that they had extended support somewhere. And why do hardware manufacturers still produce drivers for the defunct piece of trash WIN 98/ME if they are no longer supported?? And why did Microsoft make the latest version of DirectX 9.0C compatible with WIN 98/98SE/ME?? I sure hope the next update for DX does not support those junk Operating Systems in WIN 98/ME!! You can read about the latest verison of DX 9 supporting WIN 98/ME here: http://www.microsoft.com/downl...197&displaylang=en

 

[sjgmoney]

I guess I should have clearer on my situation here. My rig is the XP one, I "handed down" my old 98SE computer to my son and daughter who are young and play games on it, surf disney.com etc. With kids always asking, "how come this takes so long to come on" I figured I'd ask about something I always wondered about.

 

[Fern]

Originally posted by: Link19

Originally posted by: loic2003

Originally posted by: Link19
The whole Windows 9X/ME family of operating systems was a piece of junk!! I can't believe those piece of trash operating systems are actually still supported!!!

They're not supported any longer. According to the microsoft product lifecycle:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/lifecycle/default.mspx

they've all entered the non-supported stage. Even microsoft think the 9x OS's are defunct! Steer clear from these nasty operating systems, you'll only waste your time, get really frustrated and be laughed at if you go for '98!

hope this advice helps...

I sure agree to stay clear of those nasty operating systems. I thought I've heard that they had extended support somewhere. And why do hardware manufacturers still produce drivers for the defunct piece of trash WIN 98/ME if they are no longer supported?? And why did Microsoft make the latest version of DirectX 9.0C compatible with WIN 98/98SE/ME?? I sure hope the next update for DX does not support those junk Operating Systems in WIN 98/ME!! You can read about the latest verison of DX 9 supporting WIN 98/ME here: http://www.microsoft.com/downl...197&displaylang=en

Service was extended to June 2006 IIRC

 

[Fern]

Originally posted by: sjgmoney
I guess I should have clearer on my situation here. My rig is the XP one, I "handed down" my old 98SE computer to my son and daughter who are young and play games on it, surf disney.com etc. With kids always asking, "how come this takes so long to come on" I figured I'd ask about something I always wondered about.

I usually run Win98se on the rig in my sig. It's the fastest booting of the OS's that have been on there (98se, win2kPro Sp4 and XP). Win XP is the slowest to boot up.

Many peeps seem to remember 98se booting slow, but forget how "slow" the hardware was when they were using 98se. It really flies on this new stuff.

What's the rig your kids are using?


Fern

 

[thegorx]

I would have to agree now that windows 98 has become increasingly obsolete but I wouldn't call it a piece of crap.
in fact I'd say for it's time windows 98 was far better than XP

XP could have been a lot better OS IMO
It's full of bloat and is missing essential tools to keep to OS in proper working order
also registry corruption is too common and no warning until the system doesn't boot.

But back to the question
the main difference between ME and 98 is that you aren't allowed to use the config.sys or the autoexec.bat files.
which can be good for end users since programs tend to edit these files without user input
but bad for experienced computer users who know how to configure there computers and want a DOS command prompt option on boot up.

you might look at tips found here

Free up Conventional and Upper Memory

now there also might be the possibility that the computer is booting faster because it is faster and has more memory and a faster hard drive controller and hard drive.

anything before ATA 100 is gonna be slow

 

[sjgmoney]

I usually run Win98se on the rig in my sig. It's the fastest booting of the OS's that have been on there (98se, win2kPro Sp4 and XP). Win XP is the slowest to boot up.

Fern

I've never seen (or heard anyone claim) 98SE boots up faster than XP. If this is true than something is seriously wrong with my 98SE rig the kids use because I would say it takes a good minute, probably 2 longer to boot up.

 

[thegorx]

actually I've built a lot of 98 systems that boot under a minute
but like I said the drive and drive controller have to be at least ATA 100
and there should also be plenty of free upper memory
also network cards and other external devices can slow boot up

 

[Fern]

Originally posted by: sjgmoney

I usually run Win98se on the rig in my sig. It's the fastest booting of the OS's that have been on there (98se, win2kPro Sp4 and XP). Win XP is the slowest to boot up.

Fern

I've never seen (or heard anyone claim) 98SE boots up faster than XP. If this is true than something is seriously wrong with my 98SE rig the kids use because I would say it takes a good minute, probably 2 longer to boot up.

I'd say that's because you rarely see or hear of anyone who uses win98se on newer hardware, much less dual boots them.

Another regular member, Thugsrook, still plays with win98se. Confirm with him if makes you fell better.

Two things (1) what are the hardware specs of the kids' rig, as has been noted, if the hardware is slow it'll boot slow regardless of the OS. And (2) A reformat/reinstall would likely cure the problem. Win98se installasrather quickly, it's smaller than the other OS's. I've found with my 8 yr old and his games (particularly playing online) that all kinds of crap get installed with these kiddie games (Realplayer etc). You may have all kinds of sh|t in start up. Type in "msconfig" and have look. If you don't what the items are, well that are websites that provide listing of these services and what they do. But it's prolly faster just to nuke to it. Then take a screenie or write down what win98se itself puts in there, afterwards you'll know if it's just crap or whatever when something else inserts itself in there.

Fern

 

[bendixG15]

All you "computer gurus" who claim WIN98 is a POS ssure weren't around when
we were running Windows 3.1 and windows 95.

You are blowing your own self righteus horn and you are making yourselves out to be idiots.

 

[bigfatdonny]

Originally posted by: sjgmoney
I thought ME was supposed to be a real piece of crap yet it boots up super fast. Any other thoughts here?

Windows ME was able to simulate a fast boot by displaying the desktop before all the system components were actually loaded. So, you get to the ME desktop faster, but it still takes a minute after the desktop appears for the system to become fully useable.

 

[piroroadkill]

ME was a horrible pretender OS, it's like a pre-release version of XP built on the 9x platform, it's not worth touching.

However I did use 98SE for a long time on my system and used to tweak the hell out of it, sure, it can be prodded and poked to be decent, but it seriously is nothing compared to XP or Windows 2000.

And nobody can say I wasn't around with Windows 3.1 or 95

Hell, I remember using DOS 2.0...

 

[foxkm]

Originally posted by: bigfatdonny

Windows ME was able to simulate a fast boot by displaying the desktop before all the system components were actually loaded. So, you get to the ME desktop faster, but it still takes a minute after the desktop appears for the system to become fully useable.

Actually ME supports the same load precaching technology that XP does which speeds up successive booting and loading of applications. This still doesn't fix the fact that is has to be the buggies OS ever released to the public for any platform. Why do you think M$ sold it for 49.99 for the upgrade.

KMF

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: sjgmoney
I've never seen (or heard anyone claim) 98SE boots up faster than XP. If this is true than something is seriously wrong with my 98SE rig the kids use because I would say it takes a good minute, probably 2 longer to boot up.

I have, actually. It depends on what hardware you have installed, but when you think about it, Win98se has a lot less that it has to load from disk into memory to actually get started, compared to XP.

The fastest system that I think that I've ever seen boot, was a Tualatin Celeron 1.2Ghz on an SiS635T chipset, ATA-100 HD, with minimal hardware, just onboard sound, NIC (static IP), and V3 AGP card.
From cold start to W2K desktop in literally under 10 seconds. The blue bar at the bottom of the screen barely flashed by it was so quick.